Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Monday he was removing the entire membership of the influential vaccine advisory panel that makes immunization recommendations for the United States, an unprecedented move by Kennedy and escalation of his overhaul of federal vaccination policy. In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal, Kennedy said he decided to retire the 17 independent vaccine experts from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices because the panel has been “plagued with persistent conflicts of interest” and has become a “rubber stamp” for vaccines. Doctors and pharmacists look to the committee’s recommendations to decide which shots to offer.

Kennedy has long criticized the panel, which makes vaccine recommendations to the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. When the recommendations are approved by the director, they become official public health guidance and are required to be covered by insurance plans at no cost to consumers.

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The ouster of ACIP members marks the latest move by Kennedy that raised alarms among proponents of vaccines. He also forced out the Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine scientist, hired a vaccine skeptic to scrutinize CDC vaccine safety data and has offered mixed messages about measles vaccines amid one of the worst outbreaks in decades. In May, Kennedy bypassed ACIP to say federal health officials would no longer recommend coronavirus vaccines for healthy children and healthy pregnant women.

Kennedy, the founder of an anti-vaccine group, said his overhaul of ACIP would restore public trust in vaccines. But medical, public health and infectious-disease experts say his actions do the opposite.

Bruce A. Scott, the president of the American Medical Association, said the committee for generations has been a trusted source for vaccine guidance.

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“Today’s action to remove the 17 sitting members of ACIP undermines that trust and upends a transparent process that has saved countless lives,” Scott said in a statement. “With an ongoing measles outbreak and routine child vaccination rates declining, this move will further fuel the spread of vaccine-preventable illnesses.”

Some of Kennedy’s longtime allies in anti-vaccine advocacy praised his move.

Mary Holland, the chief executive of Children’s Health Defense, the group founded by Kennedy, said on X the purge “opens the doors for honest science.”

Voting members of the panel are independent medical and public health experts who do not work for the CDC. They meet in public several times a year and disclose conflicts of interest at the start of every meeting. Kennedy’s op-ed referred to 97 percent of ACIP members having “omissions” in their disclosure forms, according to a 2009 HHS inspector general report, but an NPR investigation found that could include “people putting information in the wrong section of the form or incompletely filling out a section, or reviewers forgetting to initial and date amendments to the pages.”

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The panel is still scheduled to meet June 25 to 27. ACIP members began receiving notices of “immediate termination” by email more than an hour after Kennedy’s announcement, according to members who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation.

Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos, a top CDC coronavirus vaccine adviser to ACIP, said Friday she resigned, citing concerns that she could no longer help vulnerable people after federal health officials rescinded long-standing coronavirus vaccine recommendations.

Before casting a pivotal vote to confirm Kennedy, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) said he received a commitment to “maintain” the vaccine committee “without changes.” But Cassidy did not say that promise was broken, telling reporters Monday that Kennedy pledged to not change the process rather than the committee itself.

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Cassidy, a physician and chair of the Senate health committee, openly wrestled with whether to support Kennedy’s nomination out of concern about his views on vaccines.

“Of course, now the fear is that the ACIP will be filled up with people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion. I’ve just spoken with Secretary Kennedy, and I’ll continue to talk with him to ensure this is not the case,” Cassidy wrote on X on Monday.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), another member of the Senate health committee, said that the move to dismiss all the ACIP members “raises serious questions.”

Senate Minority Leader Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) condemned their ouster.

“Firing experts that have spent their entire lives protecting kids from deadly disease is not reform — it’s reckless, radical, and rooted in conspiracy, not science,” Schumer said. “Wiping out an entire panel of vaccine experts doesn’t build trust — it shatters it, and worse, it sends a chilling message: that ideology matters more than evidence, and politics more than public health.”

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As health secretary, Kennedy has the authority over appointments to the advisory group.

While it is legal for Kennedy to dismiss members, doing so in this abrupt manner “suggests a political, non-substantive motive,” said Dorit Reiss, a professor at the University of California College of the Law at San Francisco, whose research focuses on public health law and anti-vaccine groups.

“This will not restore trust in vaccines, and is not designed to do so,” she said.

Appointing new members so close to a meeting means they will not be properly vetted for conflicts of interest, Reiss said. The normal process of becoming an ACIP member often takes months, members have said.

Kennedy has a long history of disparaging vaccines, which has alarmed public health experts because he is now able to reshape the nation’s vaccination policy.

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“You have to worry that he may be bringing in people who are like-minded to him,” said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a former member of the panel. “He just makes these decisions by himself, without any input from advisory committees or experts or professional societies. He is just running roughshod over public health.”

Del Bigtree, an anti-vaccine activist who worked on Kennedy’s presidential campaign, said it’s wrong to assume Kennedy would stack the panel with anti-vaccine scientists.

“You’re going to see choices that both liberals and Republicans say, ‘Hey, that looks like a good choice,’” Bigtree said. “They know they have to achieve that if they’re going to achieve their ultimate goal, which is to have science that everyone trusts.”

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The public’s access to vaccines is threatened if Kennedy appoints anti-vaccine allies to the advisory committee, said Jeremy Faust, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School.

“We’re going to have a sicker society,” Faust said. “We’re going to have people missing school, being in the hospital instead of in school, being in the hospital instead of at work, being in the graveyard instead of at weddings and bar mitzvahs.”